The Fusiliers
by Canadian Werewolf
Summary: Okay, I'll admit it. I'm not exactly sure where this one will go, and I won't be until it's done. This one's a work in progress, folks. I've just got the first part of the first chapter up right now.


**Kittery  
Capellan March  
Federated Commonwealth  
3 February, 3062**

"That's it! There's our breach! Support lance keep that gap open. Striker and Command lance are going to punch right through there." Grabbing the throttle and slamming it wide open, General Scott Haley brought his machine up to full speed as the other 'Mechs of his unit broke off their engagements to form up around him, weapons roaring full tilt as they battered aside anything that got in their way. Several hundred tons of charging metal rumbled across the field as the medium and heavy weight machines of Striker lance darted about them, keeping the enemy from closing in around behind them.

Thundering past the perimeter and into the very heart of the Lyran field base, Scott raised his _Templar_'s arm and clamped down on the trigger for the ultra autocannon held within, hosing a generous stream of 88 millimeter depleted uranium shells back and forth across the C3 truck. A blast from his extended range PPC finished the job, the impact bowing the truck in the middle and bouncing it off the ground to land on its side in a puddle of burning fuel.

To his right, he heard the triple snap-crack as Captain Tom Roper threw ammunition considerations to the wind and cut loose with his _Thunder Hawk_'s deadly compliment of gauss rifles. To his left, a flurry of laser darts signaled the entry of his lance's _Penetrator_ into the fray. Just ahead, the final BattleMech in the lance, the much abused, frequently jury- rigged, and heavily modified _Atlas_ belonging to Gunnery Sergeant Paul Conner pumped a few megajoules of energy into a Bulldog tank that looked almost as old as his 'Mech before finishing it off with a lethal storm of shells from his assault class autocannon.

Sweat poured down Scott's face as he swept his arm mounted pulse laser across a generator farm, the green darts rendering the collection of trailer-mounted internal-combustion generators into so much metal scrap in seconds. A lucky shot earlier in the battle had cracked his engine shielding, spiking heat levels in his cockpit further than usual every time he fired, but heat alone couldn't account for his perspiration. His two lances rampaged through the enemy command center while the third one rained fire on the reinforced Lyran battalion that was supposed to be holding the perimeter in an attempt to keep them from turning their weapons inward. Any 'Mech that tried got a salvo of lethal weapons fire in the back that would put it down for good. Sooner or later, however, that would change, and what was left of the 13th Lyran Guards RCT would come crashing down on his soldiers.

"Speak of the devil." Scott muttered ruefully, keeping his voice too low to trigger his comm. system. Ripple firing his extended range PPC and his autocannon, he cut the legs out from under a charging _Centurion_, finishing it off with a kick to the head as it tried to raise its weapon to fire before turning just in time to face off with an enemy _Barghest_. This time, his autocannon spoke in conjunction with his six-pack of Streak short range missiles, chewing armour off an already-damaged torso to claw at the reactor beneath. Freed from the constraints of its shielded cage, the argent fire that was at the war machine's heart burst outwards, ravenously consuming everything it touched, leaving nothing behind but a blackened crater in the ground. Scott had but a second to enjoy his victory before he was set upon by another opponant. And another. He fired his autocannon until it locked open on an empty chamber, his missile rack having run dry against the _Barghest_. Falling back on his energy weapons, he fought like a man possessed, struggling to stay alive amidst the tide of metal and missiles.

*          *         *

  


The air reeked of cannon fire and ozone, of missile propellant and burnt flesh and hot metal. It was like a chunk of hell had been pulled up from the underworld and set itself down on Kittery, stretching as far as the eye could see. Picking his way through the wreckage, Scott joined a team of paramedics on the search for survivors. Just as the 13th Lyran had broken away to slam into his raiding party, Julie Cross's Second Battalion had arrived on the scene, rolling into them like a wave. The fighting had been vicious, with no quarter asked, and none given, as bad as anything he'd seen in his whole career. Casualties had piled up upon casualties, with amazingly none coming from his raiding party. All of the eight 'Mechs he'd led through the gap in the enemy lines had walked off the field under their own power. Admittedly, by the time they'd racked their 'Mechs onboard their DropShips their armour was more memory than metal, but survival was survival, and a victory was a victory. Why didn't he feel like a winner, then?

Grabbing the edge of a chunk of armour, he helped lift it off the body of a fallen MechWarrior before he realized whose machine it was from. Suddenly finding himself face to face with the body of the pilot whose _Centurion_ he'd kicked in the head, Scott closed his eyes. If he'd had more time, he could have shot off the arm and crippled the 'Mech, or otherwise rendered him incapable of fighting. but he hadn't. It was him or the _Centurion_ pilot.

"I'm sorry." he whispered over the body of the nameless warrior. As if reacting to the words, the man shifted slightly, an inarticulate groan rising from his lips. Scott's eyes went wide. Through some miracle of whatever god watches over warriors, the man had survived the vicious kick. How much longer he lived was up for debate, but for now, he still moved, still drew breath.

"A little help here!" Scott called out. "I've got a live one!" Almost immediately, a team of MechWarriors and medtechs joined him at the man's side, descending on him in a frantic attempt to keep him in the land of the living. Standing over them, Scott stepped back out of the way, unable to leave until the man was stabilized and on his way to a hospital. Even after he'd left, he couldn't go far, climbing up on the shoulder of what used to be a thirty foot tall, fifty ton behemoth and letting his feet dangle over the side.

Staring out over the battlefield Scott sighed. He'd come home to Kittery to get away from things like this. Huntress had earned him a promotion from Colonel to Brigadier General, a rank he normally wouldn't hold for another ten to twenty years. He'd tried to refuse, tried to retire, but General Redburn had talked him into reconsidering. He'd sent Scott back to Kittery with the beginnings of an RCT and orders to finish putting her together before continuing on to New Syrtis to have the unit officially recognized. The 9th Syrtis Fusiliers. His men and women, sent to die for him, most of them for the first time. The bulk of 1st Battalion and some of 2nd Battalion had served with him in Task Force Serpent. Others were Operation Bulldog veterans. but for the rest, this was their first taste of combat, having been drawn either from the Kittery CMM, or from various military academies. So deep in thought was Scott that he didn't even notice when Colonel Cross hopped up on the arm beside him until she waved her hand in his face.

"Crusader to Werewolf, what's your location?" she asked. "You sure as hell aren't here."

Jolted out of his reverie, Scott jumped slightly. "Julie! Where the hell did you come from?"

"Legend has it the stork brought me." she quipped. "Where'd you go just now?"

"Just thinking."

"About?"

"Nothing."

Julie snorted. Scott's on-again-off-again relationship with his dark- haired, hazel eyed second battalion commander had started during the Clan wars and had continued in its own rocky, tempestuous way through the Huntress campaign and back to Kittery. If anyone knew Scott Haley's mind, it was she.

"Scotty." she warned him. A full six inches shorter than the fiery red-headed General, the lightning in her eyes had been known to make even the toughest infantryman back down.

Sighing, he shook his head. "D'you ever feel like this kind of thing follows us around?" he asked, waving his hand at the carnage before them. "We come home after Huntress looking for a little rest, and what happens? 3rd Batt is gone, you're down to a reinforced company, and the 13th Lyran ends up painted all over the countryside."

"It's not your fault. You didn't ask them to come here. You didn't tell them to burn Hilton Beach to the ground. They lit the fire, Scotty." she said, wrapping her arm comfortingly about his shoulder. "It's their fault they got burned."

Scott just shook his head. "No. It's their fault, but it wasn't their idea. And it's not over. I just got word. They're fighting on Solaris and on Kentares IV. We're not the only ones catching hell. The hammer's coming down on anyone who speaks out against the Archon too loudly. Call up the commander of the Kittery CMM. See what he can spare to shore us up. We're going to need it."

"So they're coming back?"

"No. I'm not going to let them." Scott said simply, waiting for her to make the connection. He didn't have long to wait. In truth, Julie's mind was as sharp as his, maybe sharper. She just hadn't thought her way down this path before.

"We're going to hit them, aren't we? We're going hunting." Julie said. He could see the light dawning in her eyes as she realized what he was saying. "We'll need supplies, transport. I'll see if the CMM has any of either they can lend us. Do we have a target yet?"

"No. But give it time. Katherine'll hold up a nice big bull's eye for us to hit."

*          *             *

**New Avalon  
Federated Commonwealth  
7 February, 3062**  
  
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The pen rapped out a slow, steady tattoo against the table top of the desk residing in what used to be known as the Fox's Den. Her father's office. She could just feel the power in this place, every board, every pen fairly vibrating with Hanse Davion's force of will. She'd have to change it, all of it. This wasn't about her father's legend, or about her mother's legend, or even about the legend of the grandmother whose name she had adopted. This was all about building her own legend. The legend of Katherine Steiner-Davion.

Some people didn't know when to give up, though. Take her brother, for instance. He hadn't spoken out for or against the unrest that wracked her realm with everything from riots to outright armed conflict, but she could smell his hand in it. She was certain this was all his doing. There was no way she herself could have failed this badly. He must be doing it to her.

Take Kittery, for instance. Now that had brother-dearest written all over it. When the local populace began making nostalgic noises about the good old days under Victor, she of course told the local duke to take care of it. What should have been a simple matter of arrests and disappearances all fell to pieces because he had the nerve, the sheer nerve to mouth some simple-minded prattle about freedom of speech and civil liberties back to her. Obviously, her brother had offered him something to make him pretend to care about such stupid things. Then, when she sends the Thirteenth Lyran Guards to take care of it, who's there? One of Victor's pet heroes with a new RCT of his own just waiting to grind up her troops and spit them out broken and bloodied. An obvious trap set by her dear, darling brother.

This wasn't over. Not by a long shot. By the time she was done, she'd crush Haley and Dressari and all the other upstarts who dared threaten her rule. She'd see them all dead before she rested, every last one of them. It would be so easy, really. Draw a pair of regiments from here, shift a WarShip from there. Spice it up with some of Loki's finest assassins, and add infantry to taste. The result would be a bitter soup for Victor's pet General to choke on.

*          *             *

**  
**

**Kittery  
Capellan March  
Federated Commonwealth  
12 February, 3062**

An army may travel on its stomach, but it lives on red tape. Kilometers and kilometers of the gooey, gummy, sticky stuff stand between any given commander and whatever action he may want to take. Sometimes it seemed as if the true enemy wasn't the one you see over your gunsights, but the bureaucracy you had to endure to get those sights at all. When preparing for the Task Force Serpent campaign, Scott had seen one of his friends, an airborne infantry Colonel have a strip torn off of him because some REMF pencil pusher had decided that he had ordered too many sets of shoelaces for his men. The airborne soldiers, you see, had been tying their laces in knots so secure that it was impossible for them to come loose accidentally during the middle of a parachute drop. One side effect of this was that when it was time for them to remove their footwear, there was no way to untie them short of just cutting the laces off with a combat knife, which is what they'd been doing. This Colonel nearly got busted down a rank because he hadn't saved a C-bill or two on shoelaces.

Grumbling something most uncharitable about bureaucrats, Scott pushed the paperwork aside. Considering what he was in the process of doing was absconding with three DropShips, five companies of CMM MechWarriors, their BattleMechs, and several million C-bills worth of assorted military hardware, none of which belonged to him to perform an act of armed rebellion he found it astounding that he still had to fill out forms and sign requisitions.

A slight movement behind him caught his attention just before a pair of arms wrapped gently about his neck. Leaning forward to rest her cheek against his temple, Julie rolled her eyes as she saw what he was doing.

"Pirates do paperwork?" she teased.

"Rebels. The proper term is rebels." He teased back. "And yes, we do paperwork."

"Pirates, rebels. what's the difference?"

"Well, besides the skull and..." his voice trailed off. "I'm going to need some black paint, some white paint, and a whole lot of it. I just had a great idea."

"What?" she asked, puzzled. Even she couldn't follow this latest brainfart of his.

"You'll see."

*          *            *

            Cannon fire chewed up the ground between the _Bushwacker_'s feet as it described a tight spiral about its heavier target. In the cockpit of the fifty-five ton BattleMech, Captain Todd Fresden fought the bucking controls, struggling to keep his machine upright as it spun through the debris field, closing on his target's relatively unprotected back. Circling behind the eighty-ton _Zeus_, he spun his torso to the left, bringing his entire armament to bear at once. As soon as the newer weapon had become available, Todd had pulled both machine guns and reorganized his 'Mech's ammo bins to consolidate the CASE panels into a single unit to allow him to replace the older Class Ten autocannon with a brand new Mydron Excel Ultra 10 weapon, and as he danced the machine behind the enemy assault mech, the reason for the change became quickly apparent. Roaring, the heavy weapon chewed into the back of the enemy assault mech with a double stream of shells, tearing through the thin armour and ripping the gyro to shreds. Wobbling unsteadily, the Lyran machine took two steps forward before falling flat.

            Even before the dust had settled, Todd was coming about, turning on a pair of _Hatchetmen_ trying to pin down his lance's _Uziel_ long enough to close in and use the multi-ton titanium axes molded into their hands. So far the MechWarrior, one of those so recently acquired by the 9th Syrtis from the Kittery CMM was holding his own, his machine's speed allowing him to keep one step ahead of his opponents, but their numbers and the CMM warrior's lack of experience was beginning to tell. Soon the pair would have the _Uziel_ backed into a corner where they could get inside the minimum range of its standard Particle Projection Cannons and the pair of machine guns it carried as backups wouldn't be able to keep it from being torn to pieces by those fearsome hatchets.

  


            "Let's even the odds a little, shall we?" Todd muttered to himself, keying in both his long range missile racks and his large laser against one of the attackers. Missiles blasted great chunks of armour from the back and sides of the enemy 'Mech, leaving deep pits in the already scarred and much-patched surface even as the laser left a glowing weal across its lower calf. The _Hatchetman_, badly damaged in the earlier fighting that had destroyed most of the 13th Lyran Guards, had been amongst the forces that had escaped into Kittery's forests to repair as best they could and return to harass the 9th Syrtis. And harass they had. Bridges, hydro dams, water purification plants, any and all infrastructure was a target for these zealots. Usually, the 13th would hit a target and be gone before the 9th could get anyone into place to stop them. This time, though, his lance had been on patrol when it had stumbled into a full company of the enemy making its way across the countryside. His men gave better than they got, but they were outnumbered three to one, and already he had lost half his force.

            A shudder ran through his 'Mech as a flight of short range missiles hammered into his side. Firing his laser one more time to lop off the _Hatchetman_'s arm, he rounded on his new target. Twin flashes sprung from his enemy's arms as the _Dervish_'s medium lasers carved still more armour from his machine's sides. Clamping down on his triggers, he unleashed his laser and autocannon once more to keep the target's head down as he moved in on a diagonal path that would bring him in closer than the minimum range of the enemy LRMs while taking him into the blind spot in the enemy's firing arcs created by the earlier loss of an arm.

            "Base, this is Striker Lead…" he growled, cutting loose once more with a laser blast that cored through the armour to ruin one missile rack. "Respectfully, sir, where the _hell_ is our support? We're getting eaten alive out here!"

            The answer, however, was the same as it had been the last four times he'd called for aid: "_Hang tight, Striker. Help is on the way._"

            "Well, it'd better get here soon or there'll be nothing left to rescue!" Rather than pressing his attack, Todd found himself moving from one target to the next as an enemy _Catapult_ loomed up in his viewport, lasers strobing as ruby red shafts of light reached out for him. Alarms howled throughout his cockpit as his machine's left arm separated from its body, pinwheeling across the battlefield. Staggering under the sudden shift in weight, Todd fought to keep his machine upright.

            "Damnit, base, we need that support _now_!" he roared, draining his autocannon's ammo bin dry as he ripped into the heavier 'Mech. This time, however, the voice on the line told a different story.

            "_Striker Lance, this is Eagle Lead. Squawk ident and keep your heads down._"

            Reacting to the command almost before thinking, he slapped the button on his IFF panel that would switch it from passive mode to active mode, broadcasting his identity for all to see. Mere moments later, the ground erupted into flame, corkscrewing missile contrails stretching down from the sky to blossom into blazing orange flowers of death and destruction. Lasers and autocannon blasts crisscrossed the ground even as old fashioned "iron bombs" fell amongst the enemy force.

            The _Catapult_ died in the first barrage, its reactor clawing its way free of its metal shell to swallow the sixty-five ton machine whole. All around him, Lyran 'Mechs died in flames as a lethal rain of firepower fell on them from on high. Rounding his machine to check his six, he found the _Dervish_ tilting skywards to bring its remaining missile launcher to bear on its assailants. Stroking his laser's trigger, he burned through back armour that was more of a wish and a prayer than anything else to core into an ammo bin, sending the target up like a Roman candle.

            "Eagle Lead, this is Striker Lead. That was one hell of a light show you put on for us…" Todd breathed as the last of the enemies fell to a concerted barrage from his laser and the _Uziel_'s PPCs. "Many thanks for the assist."

            "_Just doing our job, Striker Lead._" The answer crackled over the comm. "_Just another day for the 425th Tactical Aerospace Squadron._"

*          *            *

  


"Well, what do you think?" Scott asked, stepping back from his handiwork.

            "And you're making this the company insignia?" Julie asked skeptically.

            "Well, you're the one who was talking about pirates."

            "Yeah, well I wasn't expecting this…"

            "You're just jealous because you didn't think of it first." Leaning on the gantry railing, Scott gazed up at the shoulder pad of his custom _Templar_. Starting with a glossy black background that stood out starkly against the tan and green camouflage dress colours of the 9th Syrtis Fusiliers, he had painted a massive skull and crossbones square in the middle of the pad. On the forehead of a red bandana wrapped around the top of the skull sat the regimental crest, a stylized black cat with a crimson "9" on the shoulder carrying an assault rifle.

            "The Ninth Syrtis… The Black Cats." Scott said with a smile. "Alpha Company, 1st Battalion is the Jolly Rogers from now on. I want Bravo and Charlie Companies to come up with similar logos based on the same theme and their own names by 1400 hours tommorow."


End file.
